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Parliamentary watchdog moves closer to holding Harper to account

Stephen Harper created the PBO to show he was accountable. His treatment of it demonstrates the opposite.

Government departments are slowly complying with budget officer Kevin Page's request for financial information. (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Sun., Oct. 14, 2012

Just as Dr. Frankenstein invented his own worst enemy, so too did Stephen Harper. In 2006, the prime minister established the parliamentary budget office, promising a new era of accountability in Ottawa. If you asked him today, he might say he created a monster.

Last week, the head of the office, Kevin Page, made significant headway in a months-long battle with the government over its refusal to cough up financial details related to the last federal budget. A threat, issued earlier this month, to take departments withholding information to court if they didn’t change tack by last Wednesday appears to have changed a few minds.

The details Page is after relate to how departments plan to implement the cuts contained in the budget. When he first made the request last spring, 64 of 84 departments and agencies refused to comply. But last week, faced with the prospect of legal action, 19 more departments asked Page to extend the deadline so they could prepare the requested reports. And it appears that many more, if not all, will follow.

Up until now, Treasury Board President Tony Clement has justified the government’s refusal to hand over the financial details by claiming that Page is overstepping his mandate. After all, Clement says, the PBO is supposed to gather and analyze data on how the government spends, not on how it doesn’t spend.

That is preposterous. The PBO was created to provide Parliament with the information necessary to evaluate government’s fiscal plans. Clearly, plans to cut are just as relevant to the PBO’s work as plans to spend. How can opposition parties be expected, for instance, to consider the impact of the 19,000 public service jobs cut in the last budget if they don’t know specifically which jobs will be slashed or which services affected?

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The cost of the government’s obfuscations was neatly illustrated by the recent emergency parliamentary debate on the massive XL Foods beef recall. The last federal budget contained a 7.8-per-cent cut to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, but few details about how that cut would be distributed. As NDP finance critic Peggy Nash has pointed out, it’s impossible for parliamentarians to diagnose any problem with Canada’s food inspection system or propose a solution until they have the information Page is seeking.

The Harper government came to power preaching accountability and transparency in the wake of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. Through its undemocratic use of omnibus bills and its refusal to co-operate with Ottawa’s accountability watchdogs — even those it established — it has given Canadians reason to doubt its commitment to those values.

But if, as it seems, Page will soon prevail, he will have put Parliamentarians — and all Canadians — in a position to have a more complete and informed debate about the impacts of the last omnibus budget bill and the likely consequences of the next one. He will have proved again that, in creating the PBO, the Conservatives enriched our democracy — as much as they may now regret it.

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